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"Despite the cowboy outlaw connotations, black-hat services are not illegal, but trafficking in them risks the wrath of Google. The company draws a pretty thick line between techniques it considers deceptive and “white hat” approaches, which are offered by hundreds of consulting firms and are legitimate ways to increase a site’s visibility. Penney’s results were derived from methods on the wrong side of that line, says Mr. Pierce. He described the optimization as the most ambitious attempt to game Google’s search results that he has ever seen"
Liz: February 2011 Archives
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Forum of Design for the Public Realm
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"Few of these digital experiences would have registered before the 21st century and some have become widespread only in the past few years. We’re in the first stage of a transformation of our sense of place as momentous as that which occurred a couple of centuries ago, when products from smoke-stacked factories forged modern society."
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This is sort of a frustrating summation:
"But those who do concern themselves with the formal regulation of "technology" might wish to worry less about possible negative effects of innovation and more about the damage being done to our environment and our prosperity by the mid-20th-century technologies that no sane and responsible person would propose today, but in which we remain trapped by mysterious and ineffable forces."
Stephenson gets there after listing all the very concrete reasons why we might be stuck with non-optimal solutions -- and they are not mysterious and ineffable forces at all. There's nothing mysterious and ineffable about federal regulations, after all. Ending the article on the "mysterious and ineffable" tip is possibly meant to be sarcastic, but it's neither accurate nor helpful in understanding the situation. Better to ask why and how path dependency and lock-in (Stephenson's preferred culprits) came to be.